Disposable pallets made of corrugated paper are known in the art and have been commercially available for a number of years. Such pallets are disclosed for example in Hermitage U.S. Pat. No. 2,728,545, on December 27, 1955, and Roberts et al U.S. Pat. No. 3,683,822, on Aug. 15, 1972; Schmidtke, U.S. Pat. No. 4,792,325, which issued on Dec. 20, 1988, provides a method and machine for making a cardboard pallet.
To be satisfactory for their intended purpose, it is of course necessary that such pallets exhibit an advantageous strength-to-weight ratio, and also that they be capable of withstanding considerable abuse, particularly under conditions that would typically be encountered during commercial shipment of a load thereupon. While the prior art structures of this kind have been found to be generally satisfactory, one area of notable deficiency resides in the levels of lateral stability that they afford; specifically, the load carried by a pallet tends to shift in transit, or at least to impose forces thereupon that are of varying magnitude and direction. Pallets that do not offer adequate lateral stability will tend to fail, the liklihood thereof depending of course upon the mass of the load, the conditions to which it is subjected in transit, time factors, etc.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a novel disposable pallet, made of corrugated paper or like material, which exhibits an advantageous strength-to-weight ratio coupled with a high degree of lateral stability and resistance to collapse under shifting load conditions.
It is a related object of the invention to provide a novel method for producing a pallet having the foregoing features and advantages, which method can be carried out on equipment presently used for the manufacture of similar pallet components, with little or no need for alteration thereof.
Additional objects of the invention are to provide such a pallet and method which are highly advantageous from economic standpoints.